'Tamtheel: Restoring Popular Sovereignty' Initiative Launches

[Tamtheel logo. Screenshot of image from video below.] [Tamtheel logo. Screenshot of image from video below.]

"Tamtheel: Restoring Popular Sovereignty" Initiative Launches

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Under the banner Tamtheel: Restoring Popular Sovereignty, youth and popular associations met in El Bireh municipality to launch an initiative that calls for returning the supreme legislative body of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) to the Palestinian people and towards rebuilding the national liberation movement through a democratic and inclusive Palestinian National Council (PNC). Coordinated by Muwatin: The Palestinian Institute for the Study of Democracy and the PNC Registration Campaign, the initiative aims at raising awareness and fostering discussion on the popular and democratic renewal of Palestinian national institutions.

The launch of the Tamtheel website builds on years of popular and civic campaigning as well as establishing national and political party consensus on the need for rebuilding our national liberation movement inclusive of all Palestinians globally through a democratic PNC. The website includes pamphlets, videos, and background documents related to Palestinian national institutions, democracy, popular sovereignty and the practical steps necessary towards a popular revival of the national body politic. 

The public launch brought together a panel of academics and organizers active in the campaign demanding PLO reactivation. Together with representatives of refugee and popular organizations, they gave a summary of the popular workshops, demonstrations, and initiatives, both inside and outside Palestine, that constitute the current demand for PNC elections. Participants dedicated significant time and attention to strategy discussions about the coming weeks aimed at advancing the demand for inclusive, democratic elections to the PNC. 

The restoration and institutionalization of popular sovereignty, a political principle central to the Palestinian liberation struggle, has been at the core of the demand for PNC elections. The implementation of this demand has already begun. Palestinians in Yarmouk camp in Syria became the first Palestinians outside the occupied West Bank and Gaza to register to vote to the PNC thereby asserting their claim to their national institutions. 

The first pamphlet of the series, "Restoring Popular Sovereignty, Returning to the People," is now publicly available and can be found online.

Dr. George Giacamon, Director of Muwatin, commented,

“The continuation of voter registration and its extension to all Palestinians outside of Palestine is very welcome. This work restores one of the most important achievements of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which is the transformation of Palestinians from refugees to a people possessing collective as well as individual rights, under an internationally recognized representative framework.” 

Speaking at the event, Palestinian academic Karma Nabulsi said,

“The years of popular campaigning has forged a path of national renewal and created a blueprint for the popular reclamation of our national institutions. Palestinian refugee camps and communities can continue the work of those in Yarmouk who registered themselves to vote for PNC elections: they have demonstrated that their determination and love for their people can overcome all obstacles. Today’s initiative supports these efforts by raising awareness of the history and tradition of popular sovereignty within our liberation movement and our Palestinian national representative, the PLO.”   

To visit the website: www.Tamtheel.ps

More about Muwatin can be found here: www.Muwatin.ps

Information on the PNC Registration Campaign can be found here: www.PNCRegCampaign.org

 

بيان صحفي

إطلاق مبادرة "تمثيل استعادة السيادة الشعبية"

تحت شعار "تمثيل: استعادة السيادة الشعبية" اجتمعت مؤسسات شعبية وشبابية يوم السبت في قاعة بلدية البيرة، مطالبة بالعودة للشعب الفلسطيني كمصدر للسيادة ولشرعية القرار السياسي. عبر إعادة إحياء المجلس الوطني الفلسطيني، أعلى الهيئات التشريعية لمنظمة التحرير الفلسطينية، بحيث يصبح شاملاً وديمقراطياً وممثلاً للشعب الفلسطيني بكافة أطيافه وأينما تواجد تأتي هذه المبادرة كجهد مشترك بين ”مواطن“، المؤسسة الفلسطينية لدراسة الديمقراطية، ومكتب حملة التسجيل لانتخابات المجلس الوطني، في مبادرة تهدف إلى تعزيز الوعي حول مبدأ السيادة الشعبية. وإحياء النقاش حول آليات تجديد وإحياء الهيئات التمثيلية للشعب الفلسطيني.

إن إطلاق الموقع الالكتروني www.tamtheel.ps  يأتي تتويجاً لسنوات من العمل الشعبي والمدني وتأكيداً للاجماع الوطني والحزبي حول ضرورة إعادة بناء حركة التحرر الوطني الفلسطيني، بحيث تشمل أبناء وبنات الشعب الفلسطيني بكافة أطيافه وأينما تواجد عبر مجلس وطني ديمقراطي وممثل.

سيحتوي الموقع الالكتروني على كتيبات تعريفية ومواد مرئية ومسموعة، وثائق ومراجع حول المؤسسات الوطنية الفلسطينية، كذلك مواد حول مبادئ الديمقراطية والسيادة الشعبية ونقاشات حول الخطوات العملية والضرورية لإحياء الهيئات التمثيلية الوطنية.

جمع اللقاء مجموعة من الأكاديمين والنشطاء في حمل التسجيل لانتخابات المجلس الوطني وممثلين عن مؤسسات اللاجئين والهيئات الشعبية، قدموا خلالها صورة عن ورشات العمل والمطالبات الشعبية التي أجمعت على الحاجة إلى إجراء انتخابات للمجلس الوطني الفلسطيني، كما تركز النقاش حول الخطوات القادمة الضرورية للعمل على إجراء انتخابات شاملة، ممثلة وديمقراطية للمجلس الوطني الفلسطيني.

بالإمكان تحميل الكتيب الأول من سلسلة الكتيبات: العودة إلى الشعب واستعادة سيادته عبر الرابط التالي:

www.tamtheel.ps/pamphlet/returning-people-restoring-popular-sovereignty/ 

تشكل استعادة ومأسسة السيادة الشعبية، كمبدأ سياسي مركزي في النضال الوطني الفلسطيني، صلب مطلب إجراء انتخابات للمجلس الوطني الفلسطيني. وقد شكلت مبادرة الفلسطينيين في مخيم اليرموك في سوريا بالتسجيل لانتخابات المجلس الوطني، أولى الخطوات نحو تطبيق هذا المبدأ. وقد أشار د.جورج جقمان المدير العام لمؤسسة مواطن ”سيستمر تسجيل الناخبين ويمتد إلى جميع مواقع تواجد الفلسطينيين خارج فلسطين. هذا عمل يسعى لاستعادة أحد أهم إنجازات منظمة التحرير الفلسطينية، أي تحويل الفلسطينيين من لاجئين إلى شعب له حقوق جماعية في أرضه إضافة إلى حقوقه الفردية، واعتراف العالم بهذا وبأطره التمثيلية.“ 

 وأضافت الأكاديمية الفلسطينية كرمة نابلسي أن ”سنوات من حملات العمل الشعبي قد أوجدت الطريق للتجدد الوطني، وخلقت أساساً لإصلاح مؤسساتنا الوطنية، بحيث يمكن لمخيمات اللاجئين الفلسطينيين مواصلة ما قام به الفلسطينيون في اليرموك من تسجيل للتصويت لانتخابات المجلس الوطني: لقد أثبتوا أن تصميمهم وحبهم لشعبهم أقوى من كل العقبات.  إن مبادرة اليوم تأتي في إطار دعم هذه الجهود وتعزيز الوعي حول تاريخ وممارسة السيادة الشعبية ضمن حركة تحررنا الوطنية وممثلنا الوطني م. ت. ف“. 

لزيارة موقعنا على الإنترنت: www.Tamtheel.ps

المزيد حول ”مواطن“:  www.muwatin.org 

يمكن الحصول على معلومات حول حملة التسجيل للمجلس الوطني الفلسطيني على: www.PNCRegCampaign.org

 

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412